Number 10  Spring 2015
www.purdue.edu/bcc/culturebriefs.html
Amelia Boynton Robinson: Black Voting Rights Advocate
DR. TONY GASS
The Selma-to-Montgomery March in March 1965,
which resulted in the passage of the Voting Rights
Act which removed voting restrictions so that
African Americans could fully exercise one of their
Constitutional rights, is closely identified with Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr., who led the final march.
However, it is largely forgotten that Amelia Platts
Boynton Robinson, a long-time Selma activist,
invited King and his organization, the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), to the
city to assist the freedom movement there.
Robinson, then known as Amelia Boynton, was one
of the leaders of the Dallas County Voters League,
an organization that had been fighting to register
African Americans in Selma and the surrounding
areas since the 1930s. Boynton, along with
countless others, laid the necessary groundwork for
the 1965 Selma March.
Robinson has a long history as a committed social
activist, beginning with her activities in support of
woman suffrage as a young girl. Born on August
18, 1911 in Savannah, Georgia, her parents stressed
education, and Robinson received a degree in home
economics from Tuskegee University. Her career
began as a teacher in Georgia, and she came to
Selma as a home demonstration agent for the U.S.
Department of Agriculture (USDA), educating the
rural population about food production and
nutrition. Boynton and her husband, Samuel
Boynton, were involved in registering African
Americans to vote, a very difficult process that
Boynton achieved in 1934.
Voter registration became one of Boynton’s
passions, and after her husband passed in 1963, she
worked with local and national activists to register
African Americans in a city where they were 50%
of the population, but only 1% of registered voters
as late as 1965. It was Boynton, James Bevel, and
others who organized the Selma-to-Montgomery
March that was known as “Bloody Sunday,” where
marchers were attacked by state troopers on the
Edmund Pettis Bridge. Boynton herself was
rendered unconscious by the teargas used to
disperse participants. It inspired the completion of
the final march from March 21-24, 1965.
Now Amelia Robinson, she is still active at the age
of 103, able to attend President Obama’s 2015 State
of the Union Address and has received numerous
honors and awards.
REFERENCES
Boynton, A. (1991). Bridge across Jordan. Washington, DC: Schiller Institute.
Garrow, D. J. (1980). Protest at Selma: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press.
Swanson, C. (2014). The Selma campaign: Martin Luther King, Jr., Jimmie Lee Jackson, and the defining struggle of the Civil Rights
era. Bloomington, IN: Archway Publishing.